Home > Peace in the Arts > Mass mobilization stopped nuclear war before and it can again | Waging Nonviolence

Mass mobilization stopped nuclear war before and it can again | Waging Nonviolence

The Trump administration is reviving the threat of nuclear war in a way that no other U.S. presidency has done since the Cold War.

While the confrontation with North Korea’s expanding nuclear and ballistic missile program has taken center stage, Trump’s ham-fisted engagement with Taiwan, missile strikes against the Russia-linked Assad regime in Syria and the rapid push for a nuclear weapons modernization program all contribute to a new and unique climate of nuclear threats.

It’s easy to feel disempowered in the face of such chaotic and consequential decisions, but the history of nuclear weapons since 1945 is one of extensive and frequent interventions by organized people in the United States and other countries to stop nuclear weapons deployments and nuclear war itself.

No one knows this history better than Lawrence Wittner, professor of history emeritus at SUNY/Albany and author of the three-volume work “The Struggle Against the Bomb.” His work explains how — time and again, for over 50 years — one the world’s largest social movements used globally organized outrage to pull leaders with little moral compunction back from the brink of using the deadliest weapons on earth.